MensNewsDaily Column 12

Kent G. Bailey. Termites in the Foundation: How the Intellectual Left Came to Rule Over America. MND, June 1, 2006.

True members of the American intellectual Left number in the thousands but their radical view of the world dominates the print media (led by NYT), the television media, the movie industry, the law schools and the courts, and the educational establishment from kindergarten to the most elite universities. With only the so-called Religious Right offering any resistance, the mainline churches are slowly falling in line as well. Indeed, the intellectual left is winning on all fronts as the family is reeling under the “progressive” onslaughts of abortion, feminism and gay marriage, as Christianity and its beliefs and symbols are relegated to the silent periphery of society, and as the borders are opened wide to illegal aliens who seek only a ride on the Good Ship Lollipop and not a new country to love and cherish. When did we begin to lose our children and how and why have they become more and more like “them” and less and less like “us.” How can it be that such a paltry few blue-state radicals, socialists, and neo-Marxists have managed to insinuate themselves into positions of power and influence so as to neutralize, dominate, and brainwash a once proud and powerful Christian majority that has defined the essence of America since its birth as a nation?

First, it is important to distinguish between the true left- the generals who orchestrate the cultural wars perched high and safe on the mountain- and their suggestible, naive, ill-informed, parent-hating and country-hating masses of foot soldiers. As I have argued elsewhere (MensNewsDaily, September 14, 2004, Part II), the typical rank and file American “liberal” is, in fact, a behavioral “conservative” who pursues life goals of prosperity, happiness, and success just like everyone else. He or she may mouth liberal platitudes, protest the day long, and vote for liberal candidates, but they are not “true” liberals committed to, first, re-defining America from top to bottom, and then replacing traditional Christian America with a Marxist state or some variant thereof. The forefathers of modern true liberals exulted in France being turned upside-down in the French Revolution and they were then inspired to foment revolution in Russia where they succeeded in bringing down the Tsarist monarchy and aristocracy and installing a Communist regime- one that enjoyed a brief moment in the sun before falling into the dustbin of history with a little help from Ronald Reagan. In my view, we are on a similar road to ruin in the United States of America.

We are clearly living within a post-traditional, post-Christian, and, indeed, post-American society where the ideologies of disguised Marxism manifest themselves in craven worship of the First Amendment and the manufacture of “rights” ad infinitum, cultural nihilism as expressed in an obsessive protest and victimization ethic, gender warfare and denigration of the traditional family, the nullification of moral imperative through blanket ideologies of “tolerance,” the marketing of “multiculturalism” as a means of diluting and neutralizing majority rule, the seduction and exploitation of future generations via the music and entertainment industries, the enslavement of the weaker members of society to crass materialism, drug abuse, sexual addiction, pornography, and violent video games, and so on, ad nauseam.

The Marxist says that each American has a “Constitutional right” to all of these depravities, but say a single prayer at a school luncheon or wear your silver cross a little too much in view and see what happens. You think you live in the land of the free…dream on. The Marxists that control education, the media, the publishing industry, and the flow of information in general decide what freedoms you may enjoy. Moreover, they are now engaged in the process of determining exactly who will populate your country in the next few decades. Who your children and grandchildren will go to school with, who they will marry, and who they will see on a trip to the mall in 2050 is now being determined more by true liberal Marxists than by any other segment of American culture, including the President, the Congress and the American public.

The true Marxist liberal is warrior intellectual who is patient, smart, savvy, and who thinks years ahead. He knows that how people think about themselves, others, and the world will determine how they vote, how they conceptualize issues like abortion, affirmative action, gender roles, the family, religion, freedom, rights, and the like, and how they define themselves as human beings. For 50 years, the Christian majority has been told repeatedly that they are rigid, up-tight, “ultraconservative” boobs such as Archie Bunker or Robert Barone’s in-laws on Everybody Loves Raymond, that they are superstitious religious zealots, intolerant to the core and, basically, just bad people. I call this the “Wagon Train Syndrome.” Go back and watch a few episodes of the Wagon Train series in the 1950s and note how many times “the good people” (read Christian majority) are the villains who hate and discriminate against anyone who is “different” including young girls pregnant out of wedlock, well-meaning Indians, dance hall girls with hearts of gold, and so on.

Indeed, the unremitting assault on the Christian self and soul has been around for quite some time and has been one of the most devastatingly successful ploys the intellectual left has used to gain control of American culture. Sadly, the American people- including conservatives who should know better- seem blissfully unaware as the intellectual termites continue to gnaw away at the traditional American way of life.

In four short decades, the American people have let their culture slowly slip away under the influence of those who detest them for their apathy, stupidity, gullibility, and child-like naivete, and who care nothing about them whatsoever. As a native West Virginian who agonizes over the progressive and unremitting degradation of “my people,” I see first hand with every visit back to my home state the moral and cultural collapse of a once hard-working, God-fearing, family-centered, and America-first people. The people are still warm and outgoing, they still work hard for their little pay, and they still go to church, but there is a crisis of the soul that no government largess or better-paying job can salve.

Blacks have a culture that they exult in, the Jew has 4,000 years of Jewish culture and the state of Israel for comfort, and the various Muslim cultures are hardly suffering from a crisis of self-identity, but take away the deep meaningfulness and orderliness of Christianity from a working class West Virginian- or any Christian of modest social rank- and nothing but a soulless shell of a person is left. Lukewarm or neutralized Christianity is debilitating for any social class, but it is totally devastating for the minimally educated working class person. All he has left now is NASCAR, another Big Mac with double fires, and a pick-up truck that runs most of the time. His health and marriage are all to hell, the kids are on drugs and all they talk about is rock music, the one daughter is pregnant at age 15, and it doesn’t look like any of the kids will graduate from high school. Moreover, there is no God to comfort him, for the Marxists saw that God died in the 1960s. They are saturated in hypothetical “rights” in the Godless abstract, but their lives are, in reality, a living hell.

In all of this, we see the devastating damage that the Marxist trickle down immorality has done to the lower and lower-middle classes, where life in the post-Christian trenches is the humiliating Jerry Springer show writ large. It will not be long before the more privileged classes join the hosts of lost and wandering souls below and the re-definition of America will be complete. The intellectual left speaks in the sonorous tones of “freedom,” “justice,” “rights,” and, most notably, “fairness,” in a manner that easily seduces and seems to guarantee all a heady sense of moral superiority over the evil religious right, those who desperately cling to life-sustaining traditions, those who long for some sense of order and meaning in their lives beyond crass materialism, and those who simply love their country and do not want it transformed into a Marxist utopia or some bastardized version of a dying Europe. Until we realize that minds can be invaded even more easily and deftly than borders, then the future looks dark indeed. Personally, I think it is time to call the Orkin man for some heavy duty treatment long overdue.

Kent Bailey is professor emeritus of clinical psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. His major focus is on how ancient evolutionary processes affect current human affairs. His major monograph is Human Paleopsychology: Applications to Aggression and Pathological Processes. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1987.